Spectator Life

The Kraft Heinz company has developed a pair of Lunchables meals slated to be served in school cafeterias starting next fall. The initiative has reignited a worthy debate over the nutrition found — and mostly not found — in school lunches. Folks are making a big fuss over the debut of Lunchables, as if the plastic packages of cardboard coasters that pass for pizza are somehow playing sloppy seconds to the gourmet wonders our schools have been crafting up to this point. Unless things have significantly improved since I graduated, Lunchables might actually be an upgrade from what most cafeterias specialize in — mystery meat sandwiches and those limp, anemic crinkle fries that led to my lifelong loathing of ketchup.

When rulers are thrown out of their countries, they cannot expect all that much. Think of Napoleon, first cooling his heels in Elba, then ending his days in the damp-infested confines of Saint Helena. Which is why the former Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor, was comparatively fortunate that the Parisian spot in which he found himself living after his abdication in December 1936 was Le Meurice in Paris: then, as now, a hotel that offers not only glitteringly luxurious accommodation to its well-heeled denizens, but a tangible sense of history — its lavishly appointed suites and restaurants exude an atmosphere that’s simultaneously relaxing and conspiratorial. Turn an unexpected corner, and you half-expect to see the ghost of Wallis Simpson, barking orders at some hapless minion.

Federal circuit judge Kyle Duncan surely knew in advance that he would face a tough crowd at Stanford Law School. The Federalist Society, which sponsored the March 9 event, was prepared for some trouble, since Duncan’s courtroom decisions render him anathema to the far left. When students drowned him out with insults and obscenities, Duncan called for administrative aid. Associate dean of equity, diversity and inclusion Tirien Steinbach — who had evidently choreographed the protests — was ready for her close-up. She took to the lectern to declare, “For many people at the law school who work here, who study here, and who live here, your advocacy — your opinions from the bench — land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights.

When I was eighteen, my ex-boyfriend sent naked photos of me to all my friends and family after a particularly bad argument. Inconsolable and embarrassed, I looked to my mother to see if she could help, or if she never wanted to speak to me again. She said something that I will never forget. “Don’t worry love, if I had tits like yours, I'd put them on my Christmas cards.” After that day, I no longer thought of breasts as inconsequential hanging sacks of fat. Now I just adore them — and not only my own. I have become somewhat of a breast connoisseur, and I get a good look at a pair whenever I can. So you can imagine my delight when Sydney Sweeney entered the public eye. I haven’t seen a rack that good in a while.

“There’s no snow. Nothing.” The week after Christmas, 2023. Eager to ski, I’d phoned an old friend living in a French resort at low altitude. I hoped she’d make me feel better about the headlines splashed across the newsstands. “There’s Snowhere To Ski!” “Europe Ski Resorts Close Due To Lack Of Snow.” “Record Warm Winter In Parts Of Europe Forces Closure Of Ski Slopes.” It was true, she sighed. Birds were chirping as if spring had arrived, heavy rain washing away whatever dusting of the white stuff had settled. “You’re going to have to get high”. An admittedly fairweather skier, I usually take aim at European resorts in March. When I’m lucky enough to go, my trips happen to span International Women’s Day.

Somehow an off-season for Aaron Rodgers that began with a multiday stop in a darkness retreat isolation chamber to decide his next career move has only gotten weirder now that Rodgers has announced his intention to be traded to the New York Jets. Immediately, Rodgers's decision to go to Gang Green triggered a big storyline: that he's following in the footsteps of his legendary Green Bay quarterback predecessor, Brett Favre, whose departure from the Packers to the Jets following the 2007 season was similarly fraught. Favre lasted only one tumultuous year in New York, during which he made headlines for texting dick pics to broadcaster Jenn Sterger. The Jets that year started 9-5 only to lose their final two games and miss the playoffs.

When I lived in Idaho, people would ask my mother, “Why did she move to Iowa?” Sometimes they’d break into a frenetic rendition of the B-52’s “Private Idaho” or make a potato joke. Otherwise they didn’t really know what to say about the Gem State. Residents are proud of Idaho’s obscurity. They encourage it. Iterations of “Idaho is hideous, don’t come here” are a common tongue-in-cheek caption added to breathtaking social media photos of majestic mountain landscapes and pristine trout streams.

Must every young boy and girl aspire to have a university education? This delusion has become so strong in America that many on the left demand that not only should more and more young people get into universities, but that this four-year party should be free as well.   But efforts to get Congress to appropriate the money to pay the college bar tab have failed thus far. The chief obstacle, by no means unreasonable, is how to convince the supposedly uneducated working class to pay for this sotted campus idyll of which they have had no part.

"San Francisco is the only city I can think of that can survive all the things you people are doing to it and still look beautiful,” said Frank Lloyd Wright. You might say the same thing about Marin, the county you enter upon crossing the Golden Gate Bridge from out of the City of Fog, where my mother moved several years ago to be with my stepdad. Arresting in its natural beauty, gratifying in its varied and delicious cuisine, shocking in its exorbitant property values, Marin ranks in the top ten nationally for median household income. My mother’s town, like many around it, has not a little character. There's the old colonial Spanish influence, evidenced in the mission churches and the names of some of the communities: San Rafael, Corte Madera, San Anselmo, San Geronimo.

The Office of Congressional Ethics referred Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to the House Ethics Committee Thursday to investigate “impermissible gifts associated with her attendance at the Met Gala in 2021.” This is no surprise for Cockburn — any committed socialist should be causing trouble and smashing the system from within! Ocasio-Cortez caused a stir when she appeared at the gala in a dress saying “Tax the Rich”. For months, AOC’s campaign was receiving emails from providers seeking remuneration for clothing, lodging, transport and hair styling, among other services given to the congresswoman. After repeated attempts to get a response from the congresswoman’s staffer, one email said “This invoice is still outstanding and EXTREMELY overdue.

The early months of the NFL off-season are typically flush with intentionally misleading and openly manipulative media reports about how teams, free agents and draft prospects regard one another. This year, with an embattled franchise owner weighing his options about a potential sale, it's the billionaires, and also the millionaires, who are having their plans and motivations guessed at. Since November, Washington Commanders owner Dan Snyder has been making moves indicating that he's trying to unload the team he's owned for nearly twenty-five years. For many, the logical buyer is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

Livvy Dunne is in a “cute lil jammy set Santa got me” when she answers questions from some of her 3.7 million adoring Instagram fans. You’ve probably never heard of her unless you spend a lot of time on TikTok. But twenty-year-old Olivia Paige Dunne is now the highest-valued women's college athlete, with an estimated net worth of $3.3 million. And fair play to her: at twenty years old, I was working for minimum wage as a waitress. I know very little about college sports or gymnasts such as Livvy, but nowadays having 7.1 million TikTok followers, as she does, means something. If she were to never partake in another event, she could still bring in a monthly salary far higher than most. https://www.tiktok.

When I arrived in East Palestine, Ohio, on Wednesday, the quaint Main Street was a red, white and blue sea of people waiting in chilly, drizzly weather for Donald Trump to arrive. I met up with Brian and Samantha, who live three miles from the site of the Norfolk Southern train derailment. They were acting as Tulsi Gabbard’s tour guide and graciously invited me to tag along. The East Palestine area is a typical rural community. Villages with little more than a volunteer fire department and a basic convenience-style store are scattered across the countryside. People enjoy their space and peace and quiet, but they’re also close-knit and neighborly.

At around eleven in the morning on February 28, 2001, I was standing in front of a mirror in my home in suburban Seattle, adjusting what remained of my hair prior to driving downtown to meet a friend for lunch, when the ground began to shake beneath my feet. The movement lasted about twenty seconds and wasn’t entirely unpleasant, with just the slightest hint of the old days when I was a devotee of Bacchus. After a bit, I checked that the house was all right, looked in on my infant son peacefully asleep in his crib, said goodbye to my wife, started the car and went on my way into the city. It was bedlam out there.

America's appetite for football is seemingly never satisfied. A couple leagues are still working to crack the code on maintaining a professional alternative to the NFL. Even with the NFL adding a seventeenth regular season game in 2021, the league's off-season is significantly longer than the other major team sports. Whereas there is typically a four-month layover from the end of the NBA Finals and the Stanley Cup Final and the beginning of the next basketball and hockey seasons respectively, and Major League Baseball has about five months off from the close of the World Series to Opening Day, the NFL is dormant for nearly seven months. And college football's off-season is roughly a month longer. That's a lot of blank space for a sport that routinely draws huge interest.

These shoes aren’t real. They’re not NFTs or AI-generated. They’re actual shoes. They look like Nikes but, for the most part, they weren’t made by Nike. They’re the work of Hvnd Studio, a small team of Korean cobblers who work in a legally-dubious cottage industry, recreating the original, 1985 Jordan 1 with top-quality leather and classic techniques. They’re fakes. They’re beautiful. And they cost $1,250. If Nike is the sneaker brand, then the 1985 Jordan 1 is the sneaker. It’s a classic of twentieth-century product and a pop-culture icon, tied to the mythos of Michael Jordan. These days, an unworn original pair with its box can sell for more than $20,000. Adding to the allure is the shoe’s messy path to cultural reverence.

In 2013, I was studying for a Master’s degree in Beirut when a bomb went off in Baghdad. I remember receiving a message from a friend checking in to see if I was all right — even though I was 500 miles away. It can be hard to convey to people back in the United States that violence in the Middle East is not necessarily a part of everyday life. At times — in Iraq in the years following the US invasion, for example — it is. But such attacks are usually a tragic anomaly. All this stands in stark contrast to news about the earthquakes in southern Turkey and northern Syria, which struck last week and killed at least 36,000 people.

Progressives have long sought ways to get us out of our cars. In recent months, a little-reported trend has emerged in furtherance of this goal: the elimination of parking minimums for new housing developments. A host of cities has done this, either citywide or in select districts, among them Anchorage, San Jose, Raleigh, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Sacramento. California’s Gavin Newsom recently became the first governor to sign legislation prohibiting parking minimums statewide for projects within a half mile of a major transit stop. Liberal policymakers contend that parking minimums are bad for the climate and make housing needlessly expensive by forcing everyone, including those who don’t own cars, to pay for parking.

In the run up to the Super Bowl, writers were tripping over themselves trying to capture the essence of the Philadelphia Eagles Fan™. Most of these observations focused on the degenerate behavior of a few diehards after key games, or the nonsensical yet diverse array of superstitious traditions (looking at you, guy who runs into the underground pillars on the Broad Street Line on purpose). Some dug up the old chestnut about Santa Claus getting pelted by snowballs at an Eagles game — ignoring that many of the fans responsible for that misadventure died without ever seeing the Birds win a ring.

Republicans are in disarray... over the outcome of the Super Bowl, where they’ll be watching and even if they’ll be watching it at all. In the days leading up to the year’s premier sporting event, I spoke with dozens of House Republicans to get the lowdown on their plans. A bitterly divided House Republican caucus is siding with the underdog Kansas City Chiefs by a vote of 17-10 (five who won’t be watching). One congresswoman thinks this because “Patrick Mahomes is fucking hot” while others back them as they have Mahomes and Travis Kelce as constituents. But some GOP reps are picking the Eagles, because of spousal pressure in Marc Molinaro’s case, or simply because “it’s the Eagles’ year,” according to Darrell Issa.